Army to check out prospects at first of two camps

Inside the Army football offices at Kimsey Athletic Center is coach Jeff Monken's recruiting war room.

Sal Interdonato

Inside the Army football offices at Kimsey Athletic Center is coach Jeff Monken's recruiting war room.

Monken and his 13 assistants have written the names of potential prospects on index cards. How many names?

"Hundreds," said Monken, Army's first-year head coach. "I don't know how many exactly."

The war room is an idea that Monken incorporated during his four-year tenure at Georgia Southern.

"Certainly we didn't have as many on the board at Georgia Southern as we have here," Monken said. "But we were recruiting a smaller area and they can refine that list a lot faster."

West Point's reputation as one of the nation's top academic colleges and leadership-development programs allows it to recruit nationally.

Army has already offered close to 80 juniors the opportunity to play Division I football.

Some of those juniors, including Mountain View (Ga.) center Kendel Wright, will be ready Saturday for the first of two one-day, summer-prospect camps. Army will hold its second on June 28.

Players will be timed in the 40-yard dash and the shuttle run and have their vertical jump measured. Monken and his entire staff will run players through offensive and defensive drills. A few names could be added or subtracted from the recruiting list following the camp.

"It gives us an opportunity to get physical evaluations on a lot of these prospects that we may have a question about or we may have kids show up that we don't know anything about," Monken said. "We'll have some that we really want to find out about so it may be a make or break depending on what they do in camp as to whether we are going to recruit that or not."

Monken said every player who has received an offer will not make Army camp this summer. So he must rely on film, face-to-face interaction and telephone conversations to determine if the player is the right fit for West Point. Monken, a former Navy assistant, said the academies, including Navy and Air Force, "are the toughest places to recruit to because there is the element of the military commitment after you are done."

"It's not existent anywhere else and it is a commitment, not just to come to school and play football," Monken said. "It's a commitment to take a job when you graduate with that same organization. For a kid who is a junior or senior in high school, to really start to contemplate that, consider that and make a commitment to that, that's a long time out for them to think. That's nine or 10 years down the road. ... With the military commitment, there's not always that buy-in."

Some players and their parents are hesitant to make a five-year military commitment after graduation, Monken said.

"Some of it is fear and the unknown," Monken said. "Some of it is probably a perception issue. They say, 'I've never seen myself as a military guy. I'm not from a military family. That's how you get into the military. That's for somebody else to do.' For all guys, many of them, they are first-generation military. They haven't had anybody serve or go to an academy."

Dylan Eller, a fullback and linebacker from nearby Pine Bush, is hoping to make a name for himself Saturday. Eller is on Army's radar but barely. He's sent West Point a highlight video. Eller said he spoke to some Army coaches at Lauren's First and Goal camp last Sunday in Easton, Pa., which is run by Black Knights safety coach John Loose.

"It's definitely a place that I would love to go to school," Eller said. "It's definitely a big day for me. I want to be noticed, obviously, and show them I can be an asset to their team. I just want to go there and show them what I got and hopefully they like what they see."

Monken said his criteria — a good player, good student and good person — hasn't changed since leaving Georgia Southern for Army in December.

"It's something we look for," Monken said. "We always have and here, it's absolutely critical that we find young men that have every one of those bases covered. That they are good enough players, that they are good enough students, that they are the type of young men that's going to have success and grow into a leader of character that will be able to handle the responsibilities of being a military officer."